Summative Evaluation
As a vehicle for summative assessment of an intervention’s impact and worth, an evaluation can take many different forms. A large-scale evaluation may be commissioned if the intervention has been broad based and long term. Often, this evaluation will be conducted by another consultant or by someone specializing in program evaluation. If an outside evaluator is being used, she should be brought into the consultative process at an early point (certainly by Stage Six or Seven), so that she may understand fully the purposes of the evaluation and develop a friendly working relationship with the consultant. Rivalry between a consultant and evaluator can be disastrous.
A summative evaluation should answer the following questions:
Has the intervention successfully achieved the “enablement” goal(s) identified in Stage Seven?
What forces operating in or on the client system have facilitated or blocked achievement of the enablement goal(s)?
What next steps, if any, should be taken to achieve the enablement goal(s) or to move the client system toward the achievement of other (outcome or enablement) goals?
A summative evaluation which focuses only on the first of these questions will not be particularly helpful to the client or consultant in re-contracting, in planning for future interventions or in planning for the consultant’s departure from the client system.
Planning for Evaluation
In the implementation of either a formative or summative evaluation, a client, consultant or external evaluator should use all of the data and information sources generated and made available during the third stage of consultation. During the evaluation, additional interviews might be conducted, the intervention might be observed, a questionnaire might be distributed, critical incidents might be identified and so forth. The evaluation should build on the existing information base, with the existing information being considered “pre-intervention” data that can be compared with “post-intervention” data. This comparison enables the client and consultant to assess the nature and amount of impact that can be attributed to the intervention.
